Sliced Bread Magazine

Spring 2019

A collection of student art and writing at the University of Chicago Staff

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Monica Rae Brown, Parker Chusid

EDITORS Victoria Constant, Belen Edwards, Mireille Farjo, Sophia Fisher, Peter Forberg, John Lutz, Jacob Weiss

STAFF Rosie Albrecht, Wahid Al Mamun, Olivia Alcabes, Madeline Birmingham, Conor Bulkeley-Krane, Sasha Diaz, Andrew Farry, Tatiana Goderstad, Cheryl Hao, Sofiy Inck, Caitlyn Klum, Vivian Lei, Lina Linares, Emily Lynch, Charlie Marshall, Maya Osman-Krinsky, Nora Spadoni, Bradley Tian, Eli Timoner, Angel Toro, Olenka Wellisz, Elena Whitney, Michael Wiley, Elizabeth Winkler, Alexis Wolf, Imaan Yousuf

SLICED BREAD MAGAZINE is a student publication at the Unversity of Chicago. It is published by Grace Printing. The opinions expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of Sliced Bread. All rights revert to the authors upon publication, and their work may not be used without their consent. Copyright of this magazine is protected under the rules and regulation of the Creative Commons Legal Code.

Please send all inquiries and letters to our email: [email protected]

Or, you can reach us through snail mail at the following address: Sliced Bread Magazine, 5706 S. University Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 60637.

For submission guidelines and other information, please visit our website at www.slicedbreadmag.com. From the Editors:

“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

“I didn’t just freestyle it. At the end, it’s about bread.” — Kodak Black

That you are holding this magazine in your hands is testament to the continued efficacy of love and, more marginally, to our continued desire to get this bread.

Our Spring 2019 Issue is fresh from the oven and ready for consumption. Sliced Bread, like love, doesn’t just sit there—it has to be made, remade, made new. And then it has to be enjoyed.

This has been a year of remakings and refashionings. While Sliced Bread hasn’t changed—at the end, it’s still about bread—we have been refining our organization and our content. We have renewed our commitment to maintaining a multimedia approach to art on campus by growing our podcast, Bread Beat. We have also expanded our workshopping process and made changes to our internal leadership structure to better facilitate our other commitments.

As June approaches, it is time once again to say goodbye to our graduating seniors. Monica Rae Brown, Parker Chusid, John Lutz, Tatiana Goderstad, and Charlie Marshall will all be leaving us this spring. They have each contributed their own understanding of the magazine’s mission to its quarterly refashioning, and with their departure arrives the opportunity to remake Sliced Bread in the image of its new leadership: we are happy to announce that Belen Edwards will be our Editor-in-Chief for the 2019–2020 school year.

Finally, thank you to our readers around campus for taking the time to enjoy the work of our artists! We cannot overstate the joy of seeing someone sitting in a café, library, or reading nook tucking into a copy of our magazine during a study break. Thank you.

Panivorously yours, The Editors at Sliced Bread Contents

Lit

To the boys growing up without names Felix Lecocq...... 6 I Love You & Your Pink Suede Bandana Jake Weiss...... 7 I went to therapy Elizabeth Winkler...... 8 Red Sky Over Boston Leonid West...... 9 Ouroboros Caroline Wall...... 12 Libertad (Freedom) Penelope Lavios...... 13 You Can Be the Mountain Emily Musgrave...... 16 June Jake Scott...... 17 In the Long Run Elijah Rain Smith...... 18 Accumulation Elizabeth Yang...... 22 I, Daphne Leonid West...... 24 Saturday Swim Renee Kenny...... 25 The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth Alice May...... 28 The Albany Exchange Michael Wiley...... 30 What It Means To Live Here Alice May...... 34

Visual Interlude

Shadowed Elena Whitney...... 35 Grand Canyon Carlotta Verita...... 36 The Blob Adrián Mandeville...... 37 el mercado Andrea Tábora...... 38 Untitled Andrea Tábora...... 39 Archer’s Line of Sight Geoffrey Baring...... 40 Russian Blues Dasha...... 41–45 Waders Perri Wilson...... 46 Clenched Isaac Tannenbaum...... 47 The Traveller Geoffrey Baring...... 48 Color Studies 19/01/18 – 6 Victor Almaraz Argueta...... 49 Leaking Charlie Lewis...... 50 Triangle Mountain Alvin Shi...... 51 Publicly Stoic Mélusine Velde...... 52 Chamber of Ignition Teis Jayaswal...... 53 Santa Maria del Fiore Carlotta Verita...... 54 On a Wire Geoffrey Baring...... 55 Fog Andrea Tábora...... 56 Anjali Sophia Fisher...... 57 蜻蜓 Carolyn Hammond...... 58

It’s Still Lit

[every day i am occasioned to be] Gwyneth Cross...... 59 The Bedside Table Elizabeth Winkler...... 60 A Farmer’s Life for Me Renee Kenny...... 61 Watermelon Head Anona Mouse...... 64 today is a beautiful day. Eli Timoner...... 65 In Turbaton Se Guzar Ke Atman Mehta...... 66 Phobos Monica Rae Brown...... 68 To Know or To Guess or To Hope Madison Moore...... 69 Poison Testers Mireille Farjo...... 76 DEAR “BREAKING RULES” Julia Hesse-Fong...... 78 On Being Asked to Close Read Lena Breda...... 80

Crumbs...... 81 Recipe The Food Network...... 84

Cover (Dasha) Sliced Bread Magazine

To the boys growing up without names

Felix Lecocq

I wish I was a necromancer but my words are magic-empty and you’ll have to figure it all out without me. I’ll write you recipes without measurements and hold your hands where you left them pressed on bus windows, countertops, one-dollar bills, I leave my love on all the walls. This poem is a secret only you and I and everyone else will understand, and I hope you will forgive me but I didn’t know how else to reach you. One day, you and I will sit on a concrete beach and there will be nothing between us but our words and the smallest fragment of Lake Michigan. One day, the world will stop feeling squeaky and sour like watermelon skin and breathing will stop being a part-time job. Until then, I will write and read for you and dream of yellow lighthouses and I will love my mother so that you won’t have to.

6 Spring 2019

I Love You & Your Pink Suede Bandana

Jake Weiss

Your mustachioed Wednesday is wet. Our pistachio wedding, my ashtray is brimming, This party is teeming with mice. Steaming your rice, I lose my wallet In the whirlpool sink. Twirl, Jules; rinks do not skate on themselves. Elves are jolly but not as holy As your fourteen compostable smiles.

7 Sliced Bread Magazine

I went to therapy

Elizabeth Winkler

/ because I wanted to be told I / was / brave / I wanted to sit in a chair and talk / about 2555 nights / why are you eating that? / don’t you want dessert? / seven years / biting my tongue / while she bit air / while she screamed / because that is the only true language / of eating disorders / I went to therapy because I wanted to tell someone / about the blood in my mouth / from swallowing words / so she wouldn’t cut herself on their edges / I hid behind tears / behind I’m okay / and do you want to watch tv / pots and pans were my nightmares / plated food stacked up behind my closed eyelids / I dreamt that we were children / that she was 7 and I was 5 / that she had just made her first apple crumble / her left front tooth a black rectangle / in her smile / I dreamt that she ate a piece / she went back for seconds / I woke and my big sister had anorexia / therapy wasn’t someone telling me I was brave / and I told them that I had blood / in my mouth / and they said nothing / they nodded / and waited / for me to talk myself out / of words / my tongue weakened as the carpet / reddened / rusted like period underwear

8 Spring 2019

Red Sky Over Boston

Leonid West

have to warn you first of all that I get lost easily. I can tell you that the way to my I old friend’s house involved passing under a bridge with a large blue and yellow sign on it, but I cannot guarantee either the words on the sign or the name of the bridge. I have gone over that bridge a hundred times in someone else’s car and I never remember this bridge and the bridge I passed under a hundred times on my way to my old friend’s house are the same place. The place I found with my friend lay past a comic book store that was next to a hotel that was somewhere close to a baseball field. It was a street I only barely recognized, and mostly from a dream. My friend did not recognize it, even though we could see the same tall building you can always see in that part of the city. This was strange to him, because he knows that part of the city like I know the creek by my house. It’s the kind of knowing that creeps underneath your dreams and into what many people call the soul. The street lights did not look unusual. They were that kind of old-fashioned street light the old parts of the city have not replaced. It was daytime and so we could not see what made them truly odd. I realized I was carrying a baseball bat in my left hand. This was somewhat distressing because I had not been holding anything in my hands mere moments before that realization. I looked over at my friend. He was also holding a baseball bat. His clothing had not otherwise changed. He wore a ballcap that had been red once, but the color had faded to dark pink with time. People who live in here can guess what the color of his shirt was. People who live in a different city will hate my friend absolutely because of this color. Rest assured: he also hates you. My clothes didn’t have much to do with those colors, or that hatred. I dressed early in the morning, in the dark, so my clothes were all in grey and black. Distracted by the baseball bats, I remained unaware of other, smaller changes. The ground under my feet was no longer ill-maintained asphalt and concrete. The trees were smaller or not there at all. The buildings had an air of sepia about them. These buildings were like those in the part of the city where my old friend lived. They were dissimilar to the buildings in the part of the city where we had intended

9 Sliced Bread Magazine to go. We had somehow managed to get lost in a rather spectacular fashion. “I told you,” I said, seeking humor, “I have this super power. I can make anyone lost.” This was a mostly superstitious statement. I was trying to be funny because laughter is a more comfortable feeling than creeping terror. My friend dropped his baseball bat. It clattered on the cobblestones. I looked down at my left hand. My bat was gone. “Okay,” my friend said, “this is weird.” It was mostly spring. I expected a few more hours of light, an assumption based on the time it was before we came upon this street. I looked up at the horizon, or what could be seen of it with all the buildings in the way, and realized that the sun was about to set. “What time was it when we started walking?” I asked my friend. “Just after the end of classes,” he said. “It shouldn’t be sunset for another few hours, at least.” It was not yet sunset. It was the time just before sunset where the western sky is showing signs of red or orange or pink dye. “Did we just lose three hours?” I asked. “I don’t know.” I was holding the bat again. “Is that blood?” my friend asked. Dried blood is brown. What we saw on the baseball bats we were suddenly holding again was red and shiny. “I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t want it to be blood. I looked away from the thing in my hand at the horizon again. The sun was setting. “How long have we been here?” I asked. “I don’t know,” my friend said. His voice was higher and had more air in it than usual. A woman in a dark wool overcoat was walking down the other side of the street, using a long pole to light the street lights. The lit street lights flickered in her wake. “Gas light,” I said. I was guessing, mostly. I realized my friend and I were still walking. The baseball bat was heavy in my left hand. I could taste iron in my mouth. I stopped, staring at the woman in a dark wool overcoat. I heard my friend stop. I did not notice the echoes his boots made on the cobblestones until he stopped walking. The only sound was the soft echo of the boots of woman in a dark wool overcoat on the cobblestones. I could hear no cars. I could hear bird song. I looked at my friend. He was staring at his bat. I noticed his hands were smudged. I looked down at my hands. There was rust under the nails.

10 Spring 2019

“Okay,” I said, inhaling more than was necessary to breathe. “This isn’t good.” The woman in a dark wool overcoat walked on. I don’t think she was oblivious. I think she didn’t care. We were not close enough to hear the gas in the lights igniting. In that city, big streets intersected with each other at regular intervals. One could not always see them because of trees or buildings in the way, but one could always hear them. The street we were on, lined with those almost familiar buildings, was crossed by no streets that I could see. I could see stars. The footsteps of the women in the dark wool overcoat faded slowly. It was night time, the gas light illuminating more than I thought possible. “We need to keep walking,” my friend said. His voice was hollow. “I want to get out of here.” “I agree,” I said. I could not get myself to put emotions in my words. The baseball bat was heavy in my left hand. We shared the growing sense that we had done something very bad. I looked at my feet as we walked. I looked up and found myself in front of a brick wall. I reached out to keep my friend from running into it. He was staring at his bat. “Where are we?” I asked. I turned around. I didn’t want to look at the brick wall. There was moss on some of the bricks. My friend grabbed my wrist to hold me back. I looked down. I had almost stepped on what could have been a man, once. His face had been caved in. He was curled up, as though to protect his soft parts. Two baseball bats leaned against the alley wall. My hands were empty. “We have to go,” I said. I shook my wrist free of my friend’s hand and fled. I could hear his footsteps behind me. The alley was all up hill. There were no streetlights. We burst out of the alley onto the sidewalk of a busy street. It was like the street we had been on but there were cars. I put my hands over my ears, biting back a scream. Everything was so loud. The day was so bright. My friend had his hand pressed against the side of the closest building. The people hurrying by along the street ignored the both of us. We were not strange. “What was that?” I asked. I felt nauseated. “I don’t know,” my friend said. “I need to wash my hands.” We watched each other in his bathroom mirror. The street lay past the comic book store and the hotel. I have been there since, always with my friend. I am not sure if we are friends with other people anymore.

11 Sliced Bread Magazine

Ouroboros

Caroline Wall

when the snakes swam out of the celtic sea under a star in retrograde they returned to the pillars of red basalt where their old skins were lying in wait some strained in old shapes to fit the molts while others opened their mouths and they squirmed to the tune of eat-or-be-eaten until the last of them starved how do i make myself understood when every sunrise presents itself in terms of nantucket pales, privately, and every sunset has to be received with the palette from another night? and that’s just the problem— all we have is old words for a world where nothing’s the same sometimes i want to stretch out my body and swallow it whole starting at the tail catching up, moving forward until i’m seeing through two sets of eyes at the end of the road

12 Spring 2019

Libertad (Freedom)

Penelope Lavios

La libertad de tomar una pistola y volarle la cara a tu vecino la libertad de tomar una pistola y hacerle hoyos al aire como un asesino mortal de moléculas como un francotirador de naves espaciales. la libertad de privar de ojos, de boca, de gritos y de mares a tu conciudadano, al avatar que no conoces de Facebook. la libertad de disparar 90 balas en 100 segundos con una AR-15 instrumento de paz hoz y martillo de la libertad del pueblo americano (del norte, del centro norte, de Guantanamo, de Puerto rico y Guam). la libertad de ser pobre de morirte de una enfermedad simple por que no tienes para pagar un seguro de salud la libertad de irse a la quiebra una, dos y tres veces por que tu seguro sólo llega como tope a un millón de dólares. la libertad de vivir en un trailer en silicon valley the freedom of living in a trailer camp in silicon valley la libertad de obligarte a cantar el himno nacional la libertad de que te intervengan los teléfonos la libertad a prohibirte la entrada o la salida de tu casa de tu barrio de los bordes imaginarios de un país con forma de pera invertida la libertad de matar por inyección letal una, dos y 1264 veces. la libertad de bombardear Siria, Afghanistan e Irak de no hacer nada por Yemen. la libertad de tener 6800 bombas nucleares of 50 megatons each (disclaimer: mega = mil; tons = energia liberada por una tonelada de TNT) la libertad of banning Islam.

13 Sliced Bread Magazine the freedom of making you check a box: -caucasian -afroamerican -asian -hispanic/latino -other la libertad of asking: you, what are you? what are you? what are you? la libertad de llenar el agua de plomo en la ciudades olvidadas de los pueblos olvidados de la casas olvidadas en el borde externo del estado de Michigan. La libertad de causar daños irreversibles. La libertad de no estar interesado la libertad de sentirse ofendido y de demandar y de censurar y de prohibir palabras, de no reconocer hechos la libertad de sentirse ofendido por pensamientos. La libertad de envenenar los ríos por que son tus ríos la libertad de ser dueño la libertad de prohibir la prostitución pero legalizar las acompañantes de más de cuatro mil dólares la libertad de ser dueño la libertad de prohibirte decidir cuando morir. La libertad de ser miserable, de vivir abandonado en el sur de un país con forma de cono con forma de rama con forma tubo a la merced de huracanes por que eres negro o café. La libertad de tener esclavos, de no decirle esclavos y de prohibirle la entrada y obligarlos a cruzar escondidos el desierto para luego cazarlos y seleccionarlos, para devolverlos. La libertad de tener 10 millones de indocumentados y hacerles pagar impuestos. La libertad of making only Spanish-speaking people work in your bars y your diners.

La libertad de venir a mi casa y matarme a balazos por que no te gustó este poema, por que tu arma esta debidamente inscrita. La liberad de matar a J.F. Kennedy La libertad de matar a Dr. Martin Luther King

14 Spring 2019

La libertad de matar a Malcom X La liberad de bombardear Hiroshima y Nagasaki La libertad de invadir Vietnam La libertad de invadir Korea La libertad de invadir Cuba La libertad of prohibiting alcohol but giving you prescribed heroin for a back pain La libertad de negar la evolución La libertad de negar el cambio climatico La libertad de matar a mas de un millón de pitbulls al año de hacerlos pelear en boarded-up houses en el sur de Chicago en Detroit en Milwaukee or St. Luis. La libertad de matar pitbulls a patadas porque perdieron una pelea. La libertad de que no te interese La libertad de que te sientas ofendido por este poema La libertad de que te sientas ofendido por que este poema está en español La libertad de sentirte ofendido por que yo hable en español y tu no entiendas La libertad de sentirse ofendido por no entender La libertad de no entender y decir que se entiende, la libertad de no saber o saber que no se sabe y decir que se sabe La libertad de mentir La libertad de pagar impuestos La libertad de llenar tu DS 2019, de ir al consulado de tener miedo a que te echen por decir lo que piensas La libertad de volverte blanco si te operas La libertad de decir ‘grab her by the pussy’ and being the president pero echarte del trabajo, de tu escuela, de tu casa si es que alguna vez dices, if you attempt to say oh-my-god instead of oh-my-gosh. La libertad de no ser libre.

15 Sliced Bread Magazine

You Can Be the Mountain

Emily Musgrave

You can be the Mountain, And I can be the Heap. You can stand tall and proud, I will stand with my insides out. You can stretch your mighty limbs And eat up the land, Beg the people to come And cry out your name.

No one will touch me, Except birds building nests. And one day I will crumble, Either by wind or by man. A soft, enveloping death, Like that of an animal, Just one breath out. And you will still stand. And stand. And stand.

16 Spring 2019

June

Jake Scott

The pitter-patter of your words avalanches down the attic steps.

“Honey— bees are drifting through the window again.”

But I won’t pick up the broken glass, already pollinated by this pulse, so I roll over and wonder what will be left: just the –bees and the catacombs of our afternoons.

17 Sliced Bread Magazine

In the Long Run

Elijah Rain Smith

obin is as deep as you’ve ever seen him, splayed across the too-small bed, R photoshoot-perfect. Well, depending on the photoshoot. You can’t see his face for his (curly, avant-garde, ridiculous) hair. He throws a grape at you. “Yeah, I know that look. No haircuts! After midnight you always try for a ‘statement do’.” You eat the grape. He starts off on some point about his sovereignty over his hair, waving an empty wine bottle to each tired note. A drop rolls down its side. He kisses it off the glass and picks up where he left off. You’re not paying attention. He doesn’t sound serious. And to the left of his face is a pretty sight—the empty sky, framed by that tiny little window that always reminds you of a porthole. It’s open, curtains twitching in the smoke drifting into your apartment. Every night is barbecue night, apparently. The midnight special- hamburgers. Well done. An hour later and he’s capitulated. “Conditionally!” Yeah. He gets to monologue at you, another long, meandering story he’ll pull out of his ass. You’re more than okay with that. He’s frocked and seated on your bathroom tile by the time he has tonight’s story. “Ok, so. I grew up on that ranch, right? Ginormous place. All sharp edges and cliffs by the sea.” “You’re from Texas, Ro.” He frowns at you. You eat another grape. “Texas has seas. Anyways, there was this one cliff, jutted out over the rocks, overgrown, covered in poison ivy or snakes or something. One of the few places I was never allowed to go.” He pauses. If he’s expecting a dramatic you didn’t from you, well, sucks. “So yeah, I went. I took precautions. Rope and pitons and the rest of my mom’s old climbing kit and a heartfelt note left on my bed case I didn’t come back. And it paid off! There was a perfect little cave, nestled in the rock, halfway down to the sea.” He beams at the you in the mirror. “And we’re there. Current us. We’re in the area, on one of those road trip dates bored people do. You want to see my secret hideout so we climb down together and the whole way I’m nervous, most of my

18 Spring 2019 treasures are just trash. Legos and shit. But you’re charmed and I’m blushing and-” “Legos are trash?” He flinches and the razor in your hand takes off another inch. Almost flinches at that, too, another lock of his gone. He doesn’t. Youspiral — there’s too much acid in your words and you’re too ready to boil over and you don’t even own legos, you don’t care, and... you should apologize. He’s still talking. Oh well. “—and the cave goes deep, deeper than you ever thought you’d go. We climb down into the dark.” He’s staring at your reflection. Not sure how long he’s been doing that. You turn out the lights. “No flashlight. We feel our way down by walls carved smooth by centuries of brine. You cut your hand on one, somehow. We bandage it with the sleeve of my shirt and walk until the stone is hot to the touch and the tunnel shrinks to the size of one of us, then smaller, and we crawl deeper and deeper until this whole place is just sweat and earth and you. The walls taper to a close and we give up on digging since there’s nowhere for the dirt to go and we lie there, in the dark. My hands on your face, brushing each freckle in turn. You’ll be able to tell, somehow, and you’ll ask how I’m doing that. I’ve memorized you, you know. Every inch. We’re everything to me. The silence between us swells past the point of awkwardness and you still don’t say anything, anything at all, and I cry and cry and you hold me cause you feel like you probably should and I just keep crying into your shoulder until the salt from my eyes erodes what’s beneath us and we leave behind what you haven’t said and inch those last few feet down to the center of the world.” He stops. The only sound in your pitch-black bathroom is the razor, eating away. You want to ask how it ends. You don’t. He takes his time, like he always does. “Earth’s hollow, you know. No giant cavern, just a small little nook, dead center. We move in. There isn’t much in the way of furniture, but it’s nice. Domestic. Just me and you and the tears floating all around us.” He laughs. It’s a weird sound, in the dark. “So. We’re drifting around in my tears and your blood (which after all this time is still dripping from your hand) and there really isn’t anything you have to say so you pull a bottle of wine from the folds of your suit and pour. It mixes with everything else that’s down here and we drink until there’s salt on your lips and blood on my tongue and wine shared between us. We kiss and share it again.” You turn the razor off and feel the new peach-fuzz of his head. Can’t stand the silence that comes at the end of this, never could, cut more and more and covered the tiles in some vain attempt to stop what you know is coming, and it comes anyways. He doesn’t talk, just brushes hair off his shoulders and turns around to kiss you. You pull your face away and lead him back to bed and even here, even now, you’re regretting the hair he’ll leave behind when he’s gone in the morning and

19 Sliced Bread Magazine you know that if all this production and three years of your life aren’t enough for you to forget the little things then maybe you can’t, maybe you won’t. He pulls you downwards and you do forget for a little while and your whole world is the smell of the conditioner in the hair he’s shedding and the smoke from the fire that’s still going, even here, even now. He curls up with you afterwards. In the morning, he’s gone. You’re on a very empty bed. For a second that’s just some tasteless metaphor for your abandonment but—as you actually come to your senses—the lack of blankets or sheets or bedspreads strips you of anything maudlin. You get up. Your washing machine is running and Robin is sitting at the kitchen table. Your boyfriend—who can apparently do all this without waking you up—is wearing a beanie. It’s August. This is probably bad. “Made you breakfast.” And look at that, he did. Eggs and French toast and it’s the same thing you had in the diner all those years ago and if he was a decent chef this would’ve actually been cute. Looks edible, though. Huh. You eat some. It’s not bad. You pour syrup on both portions and he gasps in mock horror. “Zack! What would Paula Deen say?” “Something racist, probably. And she likes syrup. You’re thinking of Rachel Ray.” The silence, again, is too long for comfort. He plays with his food. You find yourself worrying about him. “Hey, Ro. Where’d you get this recipe? The toast is actually good.” He raises an eyebrow. It’s pretty suave for a man in teal boxers. “You don’t need a recipe for French toast. It’s toast.” “I don’t. But, you do.” “Ha, ha. Can you believe I’ve missed your jokes.” You look at him. “The New York Times cooking section. I’ve been practicing but your stove really isn’t very good so if this didn’t turn out it’s not my fault and I really did try, Zack, and it tastes okay to me! So. Um, you’re welcome.” You smile, shyly. It’s hard work, you’re not a very shy person, but he deserves it. “Thanks, Ro. I’ve missed you.” He sighs. It’s a drawn-out, shaky affair. “I’ve missed you too. Happy three years.” You take a bite of your syrup eggs and reach across the table for his hand. He gives it to you and smiles and you break a little, quietly. “Happy three years.” – – – An hour later and he’s gone, and not just in the other room. The two of you barely had time for breakfast. You go back to bed. When it’s obvious that you’re not getting any sleep, you decide to sweep the bathroom. The perfect mix of reminders of Robin and drudgery that gives you way too much time to think. Maybe you’re a masochist.

20 Spring 2019

His hair is all over the floor and yeah, this is terrible. You like his curls after they’re gone? You’re gonna call him. You’re not. You’re gonna wait three days and make some stupid joke about it and he’ll laugh and things will be normal again, just with a thousand miles between you and every thought leads back to that and you’re just gonna sweep up this fucking hair and be done with it. And keep a lock of it, maybe, because you’re pretty sure he’ll think that’s cute. There’s a post-it note stuck to the dryer. Loopy handwriting, robin’s-egg ink. Robin’s. When he wants to impress someone, at least, and even after three years you can’t help but be flattered. hey thanks for the haircut. i think it’ll grow on me. ha ha. see you in six months. <3 And there’s a sketch on the back of it. Robin, laughing, with his hands in his curls. Something is dribbling from his mouth, helpfully labeled in three separate places—“blood,” “wine,” “tears.” You grab everything and remake your bed. It’s warm, and the stupid part of your brain insists on pretending that’s him. Boy’s a regular space heater. You’ve always liked that. You close the blinds and burrow deep into blankets that don’t smell like him anymore and do your best to sleep, somehow.

21 Sliced Bread Magazine

Accumulation

Elizabeth Yang

Do not think I will ever forget who you were on July 13th. You’d finally permitted your hair to twist and curl on its own, hazy, golden sunlight splashing through the tips. Your hands let me in, like floodgates opened or a monsoon, after even the birds and the bugs had given up on rain. Your eyes are cold now and the rain cuts a sheet of distance between us. I wonder how the summer slipped past so quietly, turning buildings once resplendent into brick exteriors of un-welcome. Your eyes say, I will not be responsible for murder, but I am just glad to feel you again, even if you’re already only a ghost, a wisp of white smoke gone. I spent all of August remembering the cool ripple of silky purple, the taste of champagne still lingering on your lips, and how a fourth floor bedroom in Harlem— AC beating and laundry, piled on a chair— adopted the hushed reverence of a street blanketed by its first snow. So I drank skim milk and waited for you, in the sun and on the train, slow petrification in a room of neon circles, transparent hearts lined in a row. “I’ll text you,” you say now, but you won’t.

22 Spring 2019

We shed our summer skins—your black button down shirt, my starry peach dress— and the love that just wouldn’t take. Maybe I can want you enough to turn you around, but September fog shrouds you. You walk until I cannot see you anymore, and I ride the subway home.

23 Sliced Bread Magazine

I, Daphne

Leonid West

Do you remember Ladon’s grief ? [Ovid called him Pineios, but we are setting aside the Romans For just a moment] He was Daphne’s—he was my father. A water god, a place-spirit given name and children. [I have been asked, “Why a tree? Couldn’t he have changed you into something else?” What would you do if you were a river Facing down the sun?]

I remember my father, even as the river moves [And became Pineios, in Thessaly, And I became scattered among my Hundred hundred thousand children] As I, Daphne, stood frozen, my heart only now calmed From my leaves and branches being broken [We cannot set Ovid aside forever, he was righter than he knew When he said even the stars would remember him. He is what passed me, with a different father, on. I owe my immortality to a man who would strip My very name from me, Daphne.]

24 Spring 2019

Saturday Swim

Renee Kenny

wondered how it could be so crowded. I’d never been there before on a Saturday, I so I guess families came, came to become fit and happy. Luckily my Zumba class was in the big exercise room, a room with windows facing the outdoors, on this frigid January day, which was bright as the ice prisms on my car. Thirty women attempted to follow the steps, myself far from the ideal, far from having the rhythm and coordination necessary, hoping over time to somehow improve, to not embarrass myself. But it was an hour of cardio so I went, there being no yoga class that day except the one at eight AM, and really, it was a Saturday, and who gets up in time for eight AM yoga? After Zumba, I looked over at the pool, checking to see if there were any open lanes, and there was one, right in the center. So, quickly, I went back to my car, grabbed my swim bag and left my exercise bag. Signing in again, changing, leaving my bag of shampoo and conditioner hanging with the others outside the showers, I arrived, not seeing very well without my contacts, but well enough by squinting to guess that lane four was still open. Diving into the deep end, I cherished the feel of the silky water. Holding the chlorine molecules tightly, the blueness felt like a blanket hugging my body with its warmth. Nine degrees outside, it was eighty-six degrees in this miraculous pool. I’d treated myself to two new swimsuits for the new year, as a motivational device. I really adored them, as they were of thicker material than my old ones. I alternated them, hanging up the wet one to dry while using the other. They felt cozy at the store, hugging my body, but this one, the bright pink one with the black straps, weirdly opened up in the back as I swam the backstroke. Just a minor irritation, as I liked it for being new and bright. My old Dolfin suit faded so much that the purple now was more a beige. The black morphed into dirty grey, and the vibrant blue resembled the ocean at twilight. The previous suits, all Speedos, had become threadbare and, in my lack of confidence in my body, immodest. So I purchased this one and a bright orange zig-zag diagonal print, which radiated happiness and fit perfectly. Saturday was swim lesson day, I learned from watching the lanes next to me. Five little children, maybe age six or so, waited for instructions from the two

25 Sliced Bread Magazine teenagers in suits and towels troweling the sidelines, giving instruction. Alex always went first. I looked over, noticing that Alex was a girl, overweight, wearing a royal purple swimsuit that seemed to be infused with metallic shiny threads. The other four were boys, but the instructor never mentioned their names. She seemed to focus on Alex. Once, at the deep end, one of the little boys asked if he had done the stroke correctly, and the teacher said, “Yes, you are the only one listening to me.” This boy was dark-skinned and thin as a stick, a deep brown branch with baggy, long swim trunks that loosely grasped his waist, appearing as though they might slip off when it was his turn to dive in. Two other boys looked much like him, indeed the bleachers on this side of the pool were occupied by what I guessed were their families, still bundled against the chill outdoors, but now inside the cocoon of warmth which was the pool deck. The other boy’s blond hair was clipped in a crew cut, his green and yellow goggles tightly pressed against his head. His swim trunks were white and green with a pattern that I could not see, due to my nearsightedness. At the bottom of the pool, near the deep end, one single tile was missing. It bothered me somewhat, distracting me from my karma, that, of the thousands of little nearly white square tiles, this one was gone. It seemed a tragedy, as I knew that over the holidays they had drained and closed the pool for two weeks while re-plastering and re-tiling its deep belly. I wondered how it would be possible to fix this one defect again, possible without draining the pool once more. Long ago I learned not to be distracted by the flags. The flags hanging from the ceiling, a tall, two-story ceiling, were red, white and navy blue. Strangely, the flags hanging over the two ends of the rectangle were gold and royal blue. Banners hung from the walls of every other color, purple and orange and yellow, thanking donors for their generosity. I banished the clashing flags from my mind. The two lanes at the other side of the pool also contained lessons, this time for older athletes. Next to lane four, a man arrived with a young man. The young man swam to the deep end, hung off the block and began yelling and moaning. I thought that perhaps he was on the spectrum, and there for water therapy. When his loud, unusual sounds reverberated off the walls, one little girl, in a pink dance costume, maybe waiting for her class or just finished, maybe waiting for her brother in the pool to be done, tentatively dipping her toes into the side of the pool, began to cry. She got up and started to walk away, looking over her shoulder to make sure that her dad saw this act of sadness and independence. He did, picking her up and holding her on the bleachers. The caretaker brought the moaning man out of the pool, and his lane was filled by an older man who had a surprisingly strong freestyle. Each child practiced their dives last, and finally were allowed to perform a cannonball if they wished, and time ended for the lesson. Lessons for the next age group began already, with the little ones gathered at the shallow end amidst the

26 Spring 2019 kickboards and foam barbells and other detritus of swimming. Everyone’s parents had gathered their budding swimmers and walked toward the locker rooms, praising the efforts of their brave tiny fishes. For swimming in this large pool, with a twelve-foot deep end, was certainly an act of bravery. Alex stood alone, but, noticing the new lessons had began, eventually moved to the bleachers to wait. I watched her, saw the slow, soft tear silently travel down her cheek. The pool deck is a noisy place, full of activity on a Saturday. No one else seemed to notice this girl, alone but for a faded pink towel draped around her hunched shoulders. Then strode in a supremely fit woman, in full workout clothes, looking like an advertisement for some fitness store. “I’m sorry, Alex, the time got away from me,” she said, as Alex got up and walked out alongside her mom.

27 Sliced Bread Magazine

The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth

Alice May

I. Crying out nectar, bees came to me in flower, so they consumed me.

Built hives between my cheekbones, made honey from blood, prepared my breasts for their queen.

Tickling my drowned feet I worry they grow restless with my constant home.

I’m big, not a flower. My pink dress now torn, I will red to my cheeks.

But my blood yellowed when a rainbow on water stole my crimson hue.

II. Ever since I was young, my feet were scared of linoleum. My skin peeled off the floor like a day old band-aid, and my pinky toe knew it would fall through the cracks. The in-betweens weren’t the black of the tile, but the black of ants, resurrected from the ground underneath my pulsing floor, in competition for light. I had shoes, but the mud I tracked in was mine to clean, and I was always dirty. As soon as I learned how, I finger-wove a carpet for our bath room to protect my hard-wood skin in the night when the ants writhe out to breathe.

28 Spring 2019

III. Vines grew through me, stilled my fear on this sharp and fertile bud perfectly still, now, for fifteen years

I watered myself with one lilting tear, my veins prepared to drain their blood, vines grew through me, stilled my fear.

Some talked me down, but it felt clear when my feet inundated with sinking mud, perfectly still, now, for fifteen years.

My skin gave way to this growing sphere, falling back to my bones, a gentle thud. Vines grew through me, stilled my fear.

The browning greens embraced me near, carried my body with a pulsing flood, perfectly still, now, for fifteen years.

I want to fade to the atmosphere, but my legs rely on this spinning stud— the vines grew through me, stilled my fear, perfectly still, now, for fifteen years.

I V. A snake sucked the marrow from my bones and ate my meat. I felt clean.

29 Sliced Bread Magazine

The Albany Exchange

Michael Wiley

heresa Harrell had wanted a coat, she had asked for a coat, so her husband T traveled to the nearest clothing store, looking to buy a coat. It was a Wednesday evening, the skies becoming gray, shadows creeping across the road as George Harrell drove to the Albany Exchange (a place which, to his memory, sold coats). The radio was off, and George enjoyed this sensation of loneliness for a while; he enjoyed the sight of his own pale fingers on the wheel and the smell of cigarettes rising from his shirt and tie. Soon there was a light patter of raindrops on the aluminum roof. Tap tap tap. Empty passenger seats. The Albany Exchange, anyway. An emaciated building near twenty-ninth and Garfield, chiseled into the space between a parking garage and Spanish laundromat. Its bricks were painted white, its windows partially obstructed by black bars and plywood. Behind one of these hung a neon sign with letters flicking on and off: o, then o-p, then o-p-e, and so on. Excellent, thought George, who otherwise would have presumed the place abandoned. He parked in the empty street and stepped outside, lingering for a moment in the soft rain. Only a woman occupied the Exchange. A girl, more accurately. A young black woman staffing the register’s table. She had been working since noon, though not alone the whole time. When George entered the store she smiled in his direction, and he doffed his flattop at her, letting little droplets slide from its brim. “Welcome,” she said. Her face was young and lovely. “Let me know if you need help.” “Thank you, darling.” This rain had lightened his mind. He paused in the threshold while his shoes dripped on the mat. “Say, darling, have you ever chewed on a mandarin skin?” She did not seem to understand. “A mandarin skin, darling. On my way here I drove past a woman chewing mandarin skins in the rain. She sat on the curbside. Waiting for a bus, I think. Perhaps they were clementines. Oranges, even. But I could not believe it! Have you ever seen such a thing? Right there on the curb! Mandarin skins. The skins! My, your eyes look lovely.” This rain really had lightened his mind.

30 Spring 2019

The floor of the Exchange was checkered linoleum, green and white with occasional gray specks. Its walls were decorated with severed mannequin heads, each wearing at least one hat—berets and bowlers and buckets and boaters and beanies and one chupalla. Coats hung from a nearby rack. “I’m looking to buy my wife a coat,” George said to the girl. She hadn’t responded to his question about mandarin skins, and he worried that it had caused her some discomfort. “I’m just worthless about these things. Will you help me, darling? I’m just worthless about the things women wear.” “Of course, sir.” She moved slowly from behind the register, practically crawling towards the man and the section of winter wear. She positioned herself on the opposite side of the rack, so George could see nothing below her eyes. “Is this real fur?” He was running his fingers along a mink sleeve. “It’s quite soft.” “Yes, it is. Would you like to buy it?” “Oh, no. I don’t think my wife would appreciate a fur coat. She’s much too simple for fur. It is quite soft, though.” The girl pulled out another coat, this one black and cotton with polished, octagonal buttons. “Oh, no, dear. Certainly not. My wife is not that kind of woman,” George said. “She’s much too simple for such a conspicuous coat.” He watched as she returned it to the rack’s far end. “You see,” George continued, “my wife is a simple woman. For months she’s been asking me to buy her a coat. For months she’s been complaining about the cold. Personally, I don’t think this winter has been all that frigid. Do you think so, darling? Because I don’t. I think this winter has been perfectly mild. But this evening, anyhow, it all came to a head. I returned from work—I operate an elevator at the Fullerton, you see—and my wife was standing in the living room with a blanket draped across her shoulders.” The girl held up another coat for George’s approval, but he seemed not to notice. “She was standing there in the living room, alone. We don’t have children, you see, so the days are mostly hers. She enjoys the shows, and she frequents the movies and shops. Recently she taught herself to paint. A friend from work bought her a canvas and a few colors, and these things had been set up in the living room when I returned. There were mountains on her canvas—mountains which rested at the edge of a solid lake, and snow which fell against the bristles of nearby trees. It was quite a beautiful drawing, and I told her so. ‘That’s quite a beautiful drawing,’ I said to her and wrapped my arms around her waist.” From above the fluorescents hummed faintly and the mannequin heads kept watch. The girl listened halfheartedly, her hands in the coatrack.

31 Sliced Bread Magazine

“I slipped my fingers into her pockets, and her jeans and skin were warm. She leaned back to kiss me hello, and her lips were also warm... I don’t want for this story to be longer than it has to, darling, so I will get to where I’m going. We began to speak about her drawing, the one with the mountains and snow and such, and I asked her where she found the inspiration for such a beautiful scene. And she said, ‘Oh, I think you know where.’ But, truthfully, I did not know.” George paused here for a moment, pulling off his cap to reveal thin, lightly colored hair. The girl was hopeful that the story had ended. “Again,” George went on, “I do not mean to babble, so here is what happened. I asked her again where she got the inspiration, and she told me. ‘It’s all this damn cold, of course! I spend so long in this house, and nothing comes to mind but snow!’ She very rarely raises her voice, you see, but tonight she did. ‘It’s so damn cold in this house. I’m freezing in this damn house!’ I tried to explain to her—quite calmly, too—that I had already raised the thermostat. She had asked me to raise it, and I did. But that didn’t calm her. ‘I want to move,’ she said. ‘I want to move into an all new house with all new things and an all new car and an all new husband who will keep me warm when I ask him to.’” George was breathing deeply now, speaking only between heavy sighs. “You can imagine how exhausted I am coming home from the Fullerton; you can imagine what a thing it is to operate an elevator all day. I’m nearly hollow by the time I leave work. And hearing her say these things, hearing her say those words... The way she pulled her blanket tighter around her shoulders, pulled my hands from her pockets... It was the way she said it. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The way those words came out. They made me feel like I wasn’t a man. They made me feel so small. Oh God they made me feel like I’m not even a man.” George’s eyes were pointed downward, but he was not looking at the coatrack. He seemed to be looking through the coatrack, as if he were able to count the gray spots on the linoleum below. “A man must be a man. I don’t expect you to understand this, darling, but he just has to. There is nothing else to be if he can’t be a man.” His voice had gone quiet; it seemed as though he were trying to whisper the remains of his story into the mink fibers. The girl leaned in to hear him. “So I did what I thought a man would do. I did what a man does. And I suppose now that it was not the right thing to do and I should not have done it, but... I hit her. She started to say something else, and I struck her hard across the cheek. I knocked her down. I knocked her down, and her hands flailed about for some support in the empty air, reaching for her, her, her easel? Is that what it’s called? She reached for her easel, but it collapsed along with her, and the wet face of the mountains fell upside down on the carpet and—” “Please,” the girl said. She could not remember the last time she had spoken,

32 Spring 2019 but her tongue felt thick and foreign in her mouth. “Please, sir, I need you to buy a coat now or leave.” “Oh I, I understand, dear. Believe me I do. This must be as difficult for you to hear as it was for me to witness... you should have seen my wife crawling around on the living room floor, looking the way she looked, looking positively bewildered. She looked so old, too—it was the oldest I have ever seen her. Her fingers were shaking as she turned her drawing over. It was ruined. The colors had run, and there was a canvas-sized square of blue and gray paint on the carpet fibers.” “Please stop. Plea—” “That’s what really got to me, I think. When she dipped her trembling fingers into the carpet stains, and she raised her hand to her face, and she—and it really was such a beautiful drawing. You’ll have to believe me that it was. But watching her crawl around on the floor like that... I think I pitied her. I think I pitied her like would an injured animal or a grandmother who’s fallen down the stairs. A grandmother, that’s it. It really was a terrible thing to see.” George looked up again at the girl. “Look at you,” he said, still whispering. “So young. I can’t possibly imagine how young. You look like a picture. You look like a young woman I can’t quite place.” The store must have been shrinking. George stared at the girl, and the girl— please, please stop—was convinced that the space between them had been slipping away. “Anyway, darling,” George said, his back straightening, his volume coming back, “I’m sorry to have wasted your time. You have so many beautiful coats, it’s true, but I can’t dare to pick one. Sorry for that. Perhaps there is another store down the road. And I’m sorry if my question about the mandarin skins caused you some discomfort. I truly did mean no harm.” With this the man seemed to have finished his business. He gave a small, apologetic smile and, only momentarily, stood as if waiting to shake her hand. Instead he returned the flattop to his head and spun around, moving for the door. It let out a soft chime as it closed behind him. The girl could make out the starting of a car engine and knew that the Exchange had again been made empty. For a long while she observed the rain falling, harder now, through the storefront windows. She stood and watched it drip from gutters and flow along the roadsides. She watched it explode off of rooftops and trickle down the glass. It fell, and she marveled at all the clouds had carried.

33 Sliced Bread Magazine

What it Means to Live Here

Alice May

I sewed buttons to my back to remind me of clean, but they always fell off, and my mother was home.

I breathed through my shoulders like so many young girls afraid of stomachs. My lungs stretched in vain for the air.

I lived on salt water, filling lungs to the top; air the shallow reverse, through recoiling veins— They fell out of my body.

I ran and my heels felt bones echoing through thickening chambers of skin. My eyes leaked lost marrow.

Grass grew in through my pores, staying with me long after I stood; This rug under my feet felt criminal.

This house was ready to let me go, but my feet stuck to her hardwood floor. I broke so much china.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had forgotten so much; I was new in sunlight, it steeped hot in my hair.

Shaving cream lathered from my mouth, and I felt beautiful and afraid. Rabid dogs have nothing left to lose.

34 Shadowed Elena Whitney 35 Grand Canyon 36 Carlotta Verita The Blob 37 Adrián Mandeville el mercado 38 Andrea Tábora Untitled 39 Andrea Tábora Archer’s Line of Sight Geoffrey Baring

40 Russian Blues 41 Dasha Russian Blues Dasha 42 Russian Blues 43 Dasha Russian Blues Dasha 44 Russian Blues 45 Dasha Waders Perri Wilson

46 Clenched Isaac Tannenbaum

47 The Traveller 48 Geoffrey Baring Color Studies 19/01/18–6 Victor Almaraz Argueta Leaking Charlie Lewis 50 Triangle Mountain Alvin Shi

51 Publicly Stoic 52 Mélusine Velde Chamber of Ignition 53 Teis Jayaswal On A Wire Geoffrey Baring

Santa Maria del Fiore 54 Carlotta Verita On A Wire 55 Geoffrey Baring Fog 56 Andrea Tábora Anjali 57 Sophia Fisher 蜻蜓 Carolyn Hammond

58 Spring 2019

[every day i am occasioned to be]

Gwyneth Cross

every day i am occasioned to be of the utmost importance to someone

someone as strong as an ant and as cunning as a seahorse

and i am occasioned to be very taller than i am usually being

growing and reaching and stretching up (out up (out up (out

(if you stack a billion billion grains of rice on top of each other they grow very tall,

but tall like a mountain, not like an obelisk or a toothpick)

and i must find my snow shoes and climb the rice mountain

59 Sliced Bread Magazine

The Bedside Table

Elizabeth Winkler

holds the most important things, the ones she’ll wake up reaching for.

There’s a wicker basket, linen-lined, rustling with post-it scribbles: golden vines and dragons, sword fights won and mirrors that seem almost to smile; perhaps she’d call these childhood if her handwriting were legible.

Her sleep-dulled fingers also touch the once-bright plastic cup layered with the paint of Berkeley, Battery Park, and Riverside, used for half an hour last Sunday night to trap three of four grotesque, light-addled flies that rubbed their forefeet on her bathroom ceiling. The fourth eluded her—if you see it, let me know. Or just toss it out the window; don’t let the cat out, though.

60 Spring 2019

A Farmer’s Life for Me

Renee Kenny

always knew that I was destined to become a farmer. Or a farm-woman. I Whatever they are called. Let me just begin by saying that I grew up in the Midwest—right in the middle, in Illinois. If you have never been there, there are a lot of farms. Basically, go out of Chicago and you will run into a farm, maybe growing corn or soybeans or something like that. It’s hard to tell the difference as they are all so green and stalky-looking. Go one state over to Indiana, same thing. Idaho, Oklahoma (OOOOOOO- klaoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plain, and the waving wheat, can sure smell sweet, when the wind comes right before the rain!), Minnesota (more wheat), Wisconsin (land of cows and cheese), etc. You just have to breathe the fresh air to become addicted to the wonderful atmosphere of a farm. Well, at least a farm where there are no animals, as they have their own smell! Growing up in Illinois, we had a little house and a little yard and my mom grew flowers. She grew snapdragons and different types of daisies and bachelor’s buttons. There were pink pinks and purple violets. The highlight of our week would be when we went to McDonald’s for dinner. Believe me, we had no idea what chemicals we were consuming! Those green milkshakes were the best! I also remember a place called Bob’s Big Boy, and don’t really want to even think about what we ate there! Okay, so fast-forward to New Jersey, the Garden State. When we bought a house in a bucolic town, I thought it was time to bring out my inner farmer. I practically have farmer-genes, when you look at it, as my grandfather grew up on a farm in Wisconsin. So there—it was destiny. Our small plot was cleared of grass and the ground hoed up. Or is it hoedown? One of those country things. With red gingham checks and a square dance... no, I didn’t mean that. I meant that we prepared the ground and sowed the seeds. We planted some pumpkins, tomatoes and lettuce. We also planted sunflowers because they are amazing. But, this being New Jersey, do you know what happened? Deer came during the night and ate everything (even the tulips in the front yard around the trees). How dare they?

61 Sliced Bread Magazine

After Googling it, I put up a deer fence. That fence was seven feet tall! I also made a door in the fence, but it was only three feet tall, so we had to duck to get in. All was good until I noticed that our plants were being eaten again. I also noticed a tunnel dug under the fence and tiny footprints! Groundhogs! Okay, so the next step, according to Google, was to forage for rather big stones. We put them around the base of the fence. So far, so good. Beyond our yard was a horse pasture. The idyllic lovely animals peacefully grazed the whole day long. However, when summer came, humongous flies arrived, too. The poor horses now could no longer peacefully eat the grass; they were busy swishing their tails all day. In addition, some had to wear masks to keep the flies from landing on their eyes. These evil insects then decided to attack the humans, so if I was in the garden, the flies would find me and basically drive me crazy. They even invaded our house. One day, weeding the little patch, I saw them coming, a swarm. Is this revenge for all of the flies that I have killed in my lifetime, I wondered? Have they been keeping count? Have you seen fly blood? It’s green, an olive green. You’ve heard of killer bees; these were killer flies. Buzzing right into my flesh, ruthlessly taking bites. It hurt, oh, believe me, it hurt to tarnation. Falling to the bright, sunlit earth, I descended from the pain and horror of watching the carnivorous beasts crowding upon my own flesh. My limbs slowly turned black with their disgusting bodies, the hum of their feast filled my ears. I’ll never recover, I said to myself, never recover from these wounds. Now, with a single arm left, I lifted my shovel and planted some pumpkins. Even one-armed, I managed lettuce and tomatoes, and sunflowers, too. But the best part was the pumpkins. My husband said to me, “See, I knew you would never last as a farmer.” “What? Did you forget that I am from the Prairie State? ” I was quite offended, of course. Then he started humming the song from that old television show, Green Acres—remember it? When the farmer sings, “Greeeen Acres is the place for me! Faaaaarrmm livin’ is the life for me! Land—spreadin’ out so far and wide! Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside!” Then his wife chimes in, “Neeeeewwww York is where I’d raathah stay. I—get allergic smelling hay. I—just adore a penthouse view. Dahling I love you; just give me Park Avenue.” Well, I got to thinking. Maybe I wasn’t born to be a farmer. After all, it is a lot of work. There are pesky animals and insects trying to trip you up. And the grocery store was just up the road! But I wasn’t ready to give up yet. And there was no way I was going to use pesticides as he suggested. I’m just not that kind of girl. I’m a vegetarian, for heaven’s sake. While the vegetables grew fat, my own body shrank at the mercy of the insects. They jumped from the horse droppings to my other arm, and then my legs. I

62 Spring 2019 realized the risk of infection was high. They bit and bit until my limbs were useless. Just...take...me...I prayed. Close the windows, my husband has won. He was right all along. I’m no longer a farmer, just a body. The heat became unbearable. Carrion birds began circling; a turkey vulture nearly landed next to me, waiting for the moment of my last breath. We had some delicious lettuce, though. It needed a lot of washing, as the leaves had dirt between them, but still. The sunflowers were tall and stately, and it was great to see them turning their heads as the sun moved across the sky. We had so many tomatoes that after making lots of sauce, I still had bagsful to give to the neighbors. So the moral of the story is, if you feel called to be a farmer, go for it! I had not set out to become the best gardener in New Jersey, but there I was, in boots and overalls, minus my limbs, growing the best pumpkins in the 4H region! (Just watch out for the flies.)

63 Sliced Bread Magazine

Watermelon Head

Anona Mouse

There’s a watermelon on my neck.

It must weigh a fat forty pounds, I swear— On my stilted legs tilting back and forth, Forth and back, Just a sailboat chasing its own tail through thick snaking fields.

Sometimes I reach up high with Exacto knife digits Plunge them into that crunchy green— With a warm summer squelch we’ve dug into that juicy flesh Pry apart the two halves kerrr-ACK!

There’s got to be at least two hundred houseflies in there, feasting on sweet, sweet, red meat. Man, they can’t wait to get out now. Kids are a drag, they whisper, drunk, tossing a glance back towards little white pearls sunk into the fruit.

When it’s chilly the flies unravel, from their beard-stubble legs to their nailpolish eyes collapse back down into the rotting shell as a pile of worsted yarn.

Fingers can’t do the snipping thing. They dive in spaghetti-tong style and start their tugging (Come on, where is it?) It’s all knotting up now, a giant lump in an oatmeal bowl (Where is it?) It’s a wild lion’s head, a sewer-rat king (Where the fuck’s the tail? Just gotta find the tail)

64 Spring 2019

today is a beautiful day.

Eli Timoner

today is a beautiful day. today is a beautiful day because you are alive and so am i. today is a beautiful day because it’s only nine am and the world is undecided. the sun shines and the breeze blows and the trains tumble into uncertain city. certain, this day and you and i. today is a beautiful day because when you laugh it makes my organs smile gently and when you talk to me it makes my mind tremble softly. today is a beautiful day because we can spend it together. and walk wayward to 53rd, talk may words this springy day, and when you bump my shoulder. and though i think i know the answer, i want to ask it anyways; but i know better than to ruin this beautiful day. when the world is undecided. and you are certainly uncertain. and i have not tumbled yet, from things you shouldn’t say.

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In Turbaton Se Guzar Ke

Atman Mehta

In turbaton se guzar ke naya raasta banana, bardasht nahin hota, Har aks jahaan aaine ka ehsaan utarta hai, ye zamana, bardasht nahin hota

Munasib hai tumhara kehna...ab jo yaad hai voh bas yaad hi sahi, Sach hai ye bhi...ki tumhein yun bekadr bhulana, bardaasht nahin hota

Hakeekat-e-hajr pe kahaan koi mubahisa hai laazim, Bas yun aainda tum par ilzaam lagaana, bardaasht nahin hota

Vaise makool hai baat ki duniya bazaar mein milti hain, Par gahak-e-rooh se nazar milana, bardaasht nahin hota

Jo kaafir the hum toh kab se mehkoom ho chuke, Magar iss shama-e-paarsaai ko aur jalana, bardasht nahin hota

Kabhi tere jism ki har karvat se vaakif hua karte the, Ab tumhein masroofiyaton ke paar bulana, bardasht nahin hota

Socha tha teri taghaful ki koi kasak na rahi, Phir kyun ye baat dohrana, bardasht nahin hota

Khabar na rahi kaise zindagi mubalgon mein kat gayi, Dil-e-masoom ko asliyat-e-taqdeer ka bojh uthana, bardasht nahin hota

66 Spring 2019

To traverse these graves and forge a new path, I can’t bear it Where each reflection owes a debt to its mirror—this world, I can’t bear it

It’s appropriate for you to say that these memories are only memories, It’s also true that to forget you so callously, I can’t bear it

There’s no debate necessary for the truth of the apocalypse, But once again to blame you, I can’t bear it

It’s rather obvious that the world is sold at the bazaar, But to meet the eyes of the buyer of a soul, I can’t bear it

That once I was an infidel, since long I’ve become subservient, But to continue lighting this flame of piety, I can’t bear it

Once I was aware of each turn you took while asleep, And now to call you beyond your social engagements, I can’t bear it

I thought I no longer had any complaint towards your neglect, Why then if I am to proclaim this again, I can’t bear it

I never realised how my life passed among exaggerations, For the innocent heart to bear the burden of the reality of fate, I can’t bear it

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Phobos

Monica Rae Brown

This is how it feels to be Fear: He shies away from nothing but mirrors. Narcissus in reverse.

And this is how it feels to be Feared: Gooseflesh is the closest he’ll ever come To skin-on-skin contact.

He tremors into / out of time, fight-or-flight The only gift he knows how to give. He quivers into / out of life, only ever present long enough To hear them curse his name.

The war drums go on. Bootprints pool with rank adrenaline and ichor. Even his shadow leaves him in the end.

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To Know or To Guess or To Hope

Madison Moore

1. In her extended essay, “A Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf argues that for a woman to be creatively successful, she must have money in her pocket and a private space.

2. Adrienne Elyse Meyers is a graduating MFA student at the University of Chicago. Her final show is titled “No Burden // For Continuity” and will open on May 25th in the Logan Center. She is primarily an oil painter, but also a photographer, and a writer, and a teacher. She grew up in Houston, Texas, and if I had to guess, I’d say she’s about ten years older than I am. Her father was a painter and a graphic designer. She was homeschooled.

3. The first time I ever tried oil painting, Adrienne was there, watching. She was the course assistant for David Schutter’s Intro to Painting class that I took last fall, which was also the first studio art course I took at the University. When we came into the room for the third class, Schutter had constructed a complicated pile of discarded objects, from ripped cardboard and tires, to a grocery cart and an overturned gas can. Two of our three paintings from the class were of this mound. Schutter, though I didn’t know it then, is a well-acknowledged artist. I remember seeing his paintings for the first time, almost all of which are nearly monochromatic grey or black washes, and getting angry that he was making our class paint piles of literal junk for seven hours a week while he frolicked in abstraction. I never even considered that Adrienne was a painter too, or wondered what her work might look like. They played complementary roles in the class, Schutter standing silently behind me while I painted for a couple minutes followed by Adrienne asking me about my intentions or offering a bit of practical advice. At the end of the class, I had three paintings I could have burned without regret, and the feeling that for the first time, a medium had really gotten away from me.

4. I’ve been writing a lot of artist statements this quarter which is the second time I’ve ever seriously written about being an artist, and the first time I’ve ever seriously written about what kind of artist I am. It’s hard to say. I’m a painter, but not

69 Sliced Bread Magazine an oil painter, but I wish I was an oil painter. I’m a textile artist, but I’m sick of embroidery, and I don’t know how to weave, and there’s no one to teach me on a loom. I’m a ceramicist with no wheel and no kiln. I make small collages, but I’m impatient and hate sticky fingers. I’m too lazy to practice drawing. I’m too tired to stand and paint. Sometimes I don’t give myself enough credit, but all of these things are true, too.

5. When I talked to Adrienne last week, we sat in her studio on the second floor of Logan. All 16 of the MFA students have their own. The small rectangular studios border a larger common space that, when I passed through it, was full of odds and ends from projects in progress or abandoned or too big for their studios. Adrienne’s studio has one wall painted half a warm grey and half mauve. The floor is partly covered with speckled brown paper. It’s obviously a room in the Logan Center, but it definitely felt like Adrienne’s room too. She has canvases in all sizes and different states of progress hung on on the walls. Tucked in the back of a white shelf were a few bottles of alcohol. At the feet of the chair I was sitting in lay a small painting of pink bunny rabbits. On a different shelf was an anthology of Emily Dickinson poems. If I had been in the room without Adrienne, not touching anything, but moving freely about the space, looking closely, would I be able to imagine her? What does her studio say about her? Does it say anything? Probably the way that her stuff ends up sitting in a room doesn’t make any sort of statement despite the importance of having the room itself. It’s a private space, not meant for visitors.

6. My work hung in its first real show a couple weeks ago. With the embroidered photos on the wall and my name in the booklet, I realized at least three things: a. If someone expresses admiration about my art, I don’t know what to say. b. Having a fellowship is the ideal kind of artistic existence. c. My youngness is apparent, to me, and to those around me.

7. For a while, I’ve wondered why Adrienne goes by all three of her names, though I didn’t ask her in our interview. Now I think it might have something to do with visibility. When I type her full name into google, she’s the first result. Without the middle name, she’s lost in a sea of Adrienne Meyerses.

8. Adrienne said that her dad was a painter. I don’t know his name, but I’ve been trying to imagine his paintings. I think that they’re probably of people. For a while, I pushed against this because I don’t like a lot of portraiture, but now I think that it’s probably true. This is a guess. She mentioned her father only once during our interview, and her mother not at all.

9. I want to be an oil painter. I really do. I can’t make myself think like one. When

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I pick a creative subject, I see it in my head and cycle it through a few different mediums. Would this look good in watercolor or gouache? Embroidered or sculpted? Painted in oil? Most of the time when I ask that last question, a thick, blurred canvas pops into my head, weighed down by cheap brush hairs and unnatural shadows. How can I make something I can’t imagine? There’s a disconnect between what I want to be real and what I even believe could be rendered.

10. Most recently, Adrienne has made paintings for a series entitled, “New Interiors.” These paintings will be a part of her thesis exhibit, and they filled the walls of her studio when I visited. The paintings are all different sizes, but they’re held together by a taupe color that’s sometimes more pink and sometimes more yellow and sometimes more brown. Each painting is of an empty room. They take the rooms at different angles, sometimes emphasizing corners and windows, other times playing with mirrors or doorways. In an odd way, photos of the paintings hanging on the walls of a gallery space mimic the subjects that the paintings themselves are taking on. Empty rooms taken at odd angles, trying to mimic an experience of being there. They’re pretty sad paintings. Like standing in your empty bedroom when you decide to move out, instead of when you’re just moving in.

11. I can’t imagine working in the way that so many women have. They’ve been prone to endless interruption, crafting in sitting rooms and parlors, their work on display for anyone passing through the house.

12. It takes a lot of time to be an artist. Time I don’t really have now, but someday probably, hopefully will. It’s discouraging to have to push it to the backseat. To let it know that I care about it, but that it’s just not a priority now. That there’s too much stuff to do. I have to have a job; I have to be a student. I hear Virginia Woolf in my head. I’m jealous of Adrienne.

13. When I found out that my work would hang in the show, my parents drove up to see me and took me shopping for a new dress. I took the pieces to be framed and found out how expensive framing was. The day of, a friend went with me to help me install, and it took almost three hours to hang both works. Nearly all of my friends came to the reception, and so did my grandmother and my parents. My new dress looked nice, but I ended up having a bad hair day.

14. The first time I saw Adrienne after our painting class, she was painting the walls of the Logan Center Great Hall. With a roller in hand, she was on her tiptoes, reaching to recoat the white paint. She was wearing headphones. I don’t think she saw me as I walked by.

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15. “When the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun mid-air by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health, and money and the houses we live in.”

16. I respect oil painting. It’s a beautiful medium. I want to be able to work in it because I know that it can be wielded powerfully. It can create pieces that have mastered light and color and atmosphere and feeling. Pieces that give and give and give.

17. I saw David Schutter in Logan two days ago. He was wearing a brown tweed jacket. When he was my professor, he told us that one of his instructors had always dressed in formal clothing to paint, taking pride in being able to walk away from the canvas immaculately despite the risk of permanent stains that oil paint leaves. David decided to do the same thing when he became a professor, but it’s a choice I could never and would never make. It seems to require some sort of detachment from the paint. A conscious and formal decision to remain separate. When I passed him in the hall, he said he hoped I would take another painting class.

18. Last year, Adrienne made a series of photos entitled, “Every Room That Has Ever Been In You.” She made dollhouse-like mini sets of different residential rooms and photographed them in peculiar ways. In one photo, the camera is peeking through a window into a living room with two red striped chairs, a voyeur in search of something that we never see. In another, furniture and books are stacked up against a wall and a mirror lies flat on the checkered floor, reminiscent of some sort of aftermath, or a barricade. In many of the photos, blue or greenish light colors the scenes, making them feel unwelcoming or haunted.

19. My parents are both creative people, but they think of art much more casually. My dad used to draw, and is now a woodworker. He’s pretty active on Pinterest, and he builds a lot of practical stuff. My mom is a project person, and likes interior design. She makes things that are useful too, and we bond over crafting. I don’t think that either of them actively think of themselves as artists, but maybe my dad does. It feels hard to compare myself to them.

20. Adrienne told me that when she works, she likes to be closed off, isolated in a room without windows or noise. Sometimes she turns the lights off and paints under spotlights or with a projector. She joked that she’d like working in a cave.

21. When we met, she was wearing a white button down shirt and black pants. In the time I’ve known her, I can’t remember her ever wearing any shoes besides a

72 Spring 2019 pair of chunky black booties. She was wearing a necklace with a bone hung on a silver chain. It almost looked like the pelvis of some small creature, or the jaw of something larger. If it was a pelvis, and it was real, it would have had to come from something not nearly as fragile and beautiful as the bone was, maybe a squirrel or a mouse. If it was a jaw, it implies something much more monstrous, something with the intent of swallowing. Either way, I don’t think I’d want something so breakable around my neck. It seems grotesque now, though it didn’t then. Maybe it wasn’t a real bone.

22. I wonder what she thinks of me.

23. When she pulls out her anthology of Emily Dickinson poems, I imagine that she has flagged number 479, “Because I could not stop for Death.” This is a famous poem, but one that suits Adrienne’s work well. It seems so easily in conversation with difficult things.

24. I wish that I could spend more time with David Schutter. He has a nice sense of humor and I enjoyed his class. Despite his lack of explicit advice, he cares about his students and their work. He is very serious and meticulous, and I would like to learn to be strictly dedicated to a practice in that way.

25. I did eventually see Adrienne’s work hanging in her thesis show, though I missed the opening reception. When I went, I was the only one in the room, and I was having an unusually bad day. When I left the gallery, blinking tears from my eyes, I wished I hadn’t gone.

26. What kind of artist do I want to be? Can you be a fine artist, and an illustrator, and a commercial artist, and a graphic novelist, and a writer? Can you? Is there enough time to learn, to practice, to figure out which one matters?

27. Adrienne and I are similar in a lot of odd ways. We both worked in photography as our first mediums, though she went more digital and I stayed more analog. She is interested in the combination of creative fields, and I am quite firmly stuck between them. Both of our dads made art, and maybe that’s why we do too. We both write as a tool for self-reflection and to have a background source that informs our other work. She thinks she’d like to work in publishing when she leaves the University, and I’m working in publishing now. But I know we’re very different people. We probably wouldn’t be friends. Are all these things coincidences?

28. When I imagine my future studio, it’s a little bit outlandish. Sitting in the backyard of my two story house is a two room shed. The first room, the one you

73 Sliced Bread Magazine enter into, is immaculate and organized and bright. There are desks along two of the walls, and storage on the other two. There are windows on all sides and a big, soft rug in the middle of the floor. There’s an easel and a paint stand. The other room is for messy making. There’s a pottery wheel and a kiln. It’s still full of light. There’s fabric dye and a gardening station and a sink. I can decide each day.

29. Adrienne said that the rooms are empty because she is interested in abandoned spaces. Rooms that have been forgotten and people that have been forced to leave. She likes the control she can have over a space in its representation and her ability to make narratives. They should evoke feelings of longing and sadness and melancholy. She said these spaces have something for her she can “never quite dig out.” So she keeps trying.

30. If I was an oil painter, I would paint mundane things. I’d paint constructed still lives, or the view from my bedroom window. I’d walk into the kitchen, and there’d be light floating through the curtains or a sliced orange on the counter, and I’d see it and sketch it and paint it. Simple, pedestrian things.

31. My favorite of Adrienne’s paintings reminds me of my grandma’s old house in Tampa Bay. It’s titled, “Cursory Solution.” In it, a wall-sized mirror reflects a green carpeted floor and the metal casing of a heater. In the corner, nearly obscured by the mirrored wall, is an open door. When I look at this painting, I most concretely understand the sense of abandonment this series pursues.

32. When I first asked Adrienne if I could speak to her, I also asked her if I could watch her paint. It turned out that she wouldn’t be working on anything when we met up, but I can’t get the idea out of my head that it would have helped me. That if I could just sit for a couple hours and watch her paint, and then watch David Schutter paint, and then watch Catherine Murphy paint, and then watch anyone paint, it would click for me. I would understand what oil paint wants and what I can give it.

33. When Adrienne’s show opens, she will no longer be an art student. She will leave the institutional instruction that has been a part of her art making for the past seven years and step out into the world, expected to play some other role, too.

34. Oil painting is the first medium that has made me feel like, without instruction, I will be unable to succeed. My technical skills are insufficient. They’re barring me from being able to imagine the process, much less to carry it out. Maybe I would get it with practice, but the pile of bad paintings that I would end up with is a difficult obstacle to overcome, even in theory.

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35. Adrienne described her relationship to her work as romanticized and melancholic. She said that she writes to the paintings, and she feels like she’s in conversation with them. When she paints, she is working something out. The paintings are answering questions for her. Becoming animate things that lead her somewhere or push her somewhere or leave her somewhere.

36. I can’t pick. There’s no such thing as a jack-of-all-trades. I’m at the middle of a wheel, too many spokes extending to too many places. Each moment I stand still is a step I didn’t take.

37. Adrienne has never been in these rooms. She sits at her old, slow laptop and looks at rental properties. At abandoned buildings. At places that people used to live in but haven’t for a while. At places that need people, but probably won’t get any. It’s hard to imagine that these photos can convey the same things that her paintings do. Where are the feelings coming from? What rooms does Adrienne remember? What did she leave in them?

38. “To work [...] is worth while.”

39. Virginia Woolf’s sister, Vanessa Bell, is an oil painter. She designed the original covers for many of Woolf’s books. Beyond that, she painted abstract pieces and portraits and still lives and landscapes. I don’t know very much about her, and her paintings, though progressive for their time, are fairly unknown. Most people think that this is because of how famous Woolf’s writing became, both during their lifetimes and in the present day. I like Bell’s paintings. Her style shifts drastically through her body of work, sometimes in pursuit of impressionism and other times grasping at realism.

40. Maybe I don’t have to decide what kind of artist I want to be, or what medium I want to work in, now, or soon, or maybe ever. I guess it’s possible to keep moving between them, not thinking of mastery, but of each project on its own. If I concede that I can be all of these things, I also concede a certain technical prowess that comes with specific and life-long dedication.

41. I want oil paint when I want atmosphere. When I’m sitting in a room and there is a sharp need to be able to feel that feeling again. When the living room lamp is off, but a doorway of light floods a rectangle across the floor from the other room, shadowing the chairs and the bodies and the rug. When the softness of Claire De Lune smoothes the edges of the furniture. That’s when I can’t deny how much I want it. How much it could matter to me.

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Poison Testers

Mireille Farjo

Last night I am living on the first floor again.

Three old sailors hang on the glass rind, seeping methanol at the nose, sing hey chickie, hey sharkbait, hey follow-ye-home.

And in my sleep that night, I am a blind surveyor trying to decide, which parts of the air are supposed to be sky?

And I say last time you turned into a werewolf you nearly died! You breathe your own susurrus. Our lungs grow hair.

All of us, have read the story about how human life was not meant to go on past age twenty.

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The poison tester’s poison tester woke up with lead in his fingerprints, made off to Perpetual, Texas to live with his brother there. All of us, have scattered, similar, panicky. I lock myself in the moss-barn.

Times are small. The ocean has a thing with the door.

You come into the kitchen where I am neatly hemming the vowels out of words. See, like this: Feath’ry, ev’ry, g’bye.

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DEAR “BREAKING RULES”

Julia Hesse-Fong

somewhere in the West Loop on a window ledge late at night, when darkness could have been morning, silence was needed to honor passing things.

I gave my heart to the hour hand, pointed out a single cloud that night in hope the sky heard me ask: can this moment live in the body? when it echoes through me to the ground where sound instruments my organs why isn’t a question that makes sense in other words, for once I said NO armor. keel to the cruel god that made beautiful things boom then evaporate. for once NO drying flowers. forego keeping dying things between pages or plastic. for once I said YES moon.

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surrender this breath to atmosphere above to circulate beyond me. in other words, no matter miles never mind meaning near moon witness two beings grazing wings in flight, brushing like one cloud dresses the moon in lit up lace for a moment. it is and has to be enough

(we could never meet again).

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On Being Asked To Close Read

Lena Breda

But these shivering leaves—! In this quivering air, how they squirm in their confusion!: bees on the hive of limbs of the hive of trees of the hive and comb and comb and Honey and comb

I have found beauty in the impish smile of a simile The brutish stomp of daft diction But I am not Adam. and I would not name the shambles of words curling at my warm feet.

How could I see the forest for These trees— Each branch overfills me with the beauty of disarray. And only once I don these speckled frames, do I crave the once-velvet down of the world, cheeks grazed with the peach fuzz of ambiguity and blur

The amorphous sleeping cat in light: How each wandering hair in yawning morning heat forms a gentle glow around her humming mound, bleeds into the delicious wholeness of the world. Erasure of each crisp edge into a melting gradient in the sun that I could swallow with a spoon and honey.

The words on the page twist and tango on the Galette —and I must tell Renoir to button his fly cut the music and remind them the beat and steps?

80 Spring 2019 Crumbs The pages you have just thumbed through could not have been brought together without the time and effort of our dedicated staff. In honor of our long hours spent skulking in Harper, we asked: Where do you lurk?

Wahid Al Mamun in a murky birch with a turkish clerk

Rosie Albrecht Just off the interstate, behind the haunted Taco Bell. You know the one.

Olivia Alcabes kptc 307 Maddy Birmingham Inside tulips with the harvest mice

Monica Rae Brown I lurk where both I was birthed and will die–in an empty bin sixty feet beneath Mansueto.

Conor Bulkeley-Krane Definitely not at the Chuck E. Cheese in the sw burbs

Parker Chusid I lurk in the frozen goods aisle of your oversized surburban Costco.

Victoria Constant “I’m sorry, could you please repeat the question?”

Sasha Diaz Just along the border, right where I can no longer be touched by maritime law.

Belen Edwards PR6039.O25L8 1954a

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Mireille Farjo In the shadows of Denis Villeneuve’s beautiful Quebec home, feeding him subconscious suggestions about the Dune remake. Denis: if you’re reading this, cast me as an extra or I’m going to start stealing silverware.

Andrew Farry I prefer to skulk personally Sophia Fisher In a cumulus humilis—never hurt a soul.

Peter Forberg lurk is where the heart is

Tatiana Goderstad I lurk bed. Cheryl Hao i lurk in a bowl of warm pasta

Sofiy Inck the set of Family Feud after hours Caitlyn Klum The depths of Google, shopping for pants.

Vivian Lei I lurk behind the archaic torso of a huge slice of bread.

Lina Linares In so much dirt. I mean all the mud I can get, really just lay it all on me.

John Lutz in my mountaintop hut Emily Lynch on the instagram page of my dog’s daycare center (@puptownlounge)

Charlie Marshall Purgatory

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Maya Osman-Krinsky those weird ryerson ledges Nora Spadoni in the sale section of Anthropologie

Bradley Tian your LinkedIn profile

Eli Timoner On the sixth floor of Harper, East Tower, behind a large wooden door, under a blanket there lies a large sandstone labyrinth. I do not lurk there. I usually lurk with the Ronald Reagan photos in Cobb Cafe.

Angel Toro House lounge (House culture?)

Jake Weiss In a footnote, Chicago-style. Ibid. Olenka Wellisz in deep suspicion

Michael Wiley On Dean Boyer’s porch holding pamphlets about our Lord and Savior

Elizabeth Winkler between the pages of a very old book so that I am surrounded by old-book smell at all times.

Elena Whitney Friend Activity on Spotify for music recs

Alexis Wolf corner seat at Grounds of Being, coffee shop

Imaan Yousuf I lurk in the new Jewel Osco

83 Roasted Garlic and Four- Cheese Pull-Apart Bread

Ingredients • 8 cloves garlic, peeled • 2 tablespoons olive oil • Kosher salt and ground black pepper • 1/2 cup grated mozzarella • 1/2 cup grated fontina • 1/2 cup grated Parmesan • 1/2 cup grated Romano • 2 teaspoons chopped chives • 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes • 1 round artisan or sourdough loaf • 1 stick (1/2 cup) salted butter, melted

1. Preheat the oven to 375 °F. 4. Cut the bread in strips in one direction, being careful not to cut 2. Put the garlic cloves on a square all the way through the loaf. Rotate of heavy foil, drizzle with the olive the bread 90 degrees and cut in the oil, and sprinkle on some salt and other direction. Stuff the cheese pepper. Wrap it up and bake until mixture in between the rows. Drizzle the garlic is golden, nutty, and mushy, the melted butter all over the top. about 1 hour. Let cool. Lower the oven temperature to 350 °F. 5. Wrap in foil and bake for 25 minutes. Open up the foil and bake 3. Mix the garlic together with until the cheese is hot and bubbly, the 4 cheeses, chives, crushed another 10 minutes. Serve immediately. red pepper flakes and some black pepper in a bowl.

Recipe: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ree-drummond/roasted-garlic-and-four- cheese-pull-apart-bread-3731585